A drop of hell, a touch of strange...

[Medinaquirin]

I may be going nuts, but ever since I've joined up on a Dark Tower board, I've been involved in a lot of discussions about what would happen if it ever became a movie, who should play what character, etc. Well, a lot of folks were complaining that it would be a disaster if it ever went to film. So, I decided to script it myself. And I'm doing so not as a feature film, but as a series. I'd like opinions, plz. Here's what I have so far:


EXT ? Desert, day

We open over a bleak landscape, miles of hardpan desert and tufts of scrub grass, the sky a painful turquoise. Far in the distance we can see a black speck moving toward the camera at slow speed. There is no dramatic music here, just the sound of wind. Now we can hear a rustling of cloth off camera, and footsteps. A voice begins humming contentedly, and then begins to sing quietly:

WALTER: Hey Jude, don?t make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin
To make it better

WALTER finally comes into view, a man dressed in a long black hooded robe. The hood is up, the darkness of his robe and the dimness of his face are a blatent contrast to the blinding brightness of his surroundings. The camera pulls in slowly towards his hooded face, his smile the onlything visible. The speck in the distance is visible just over his shoulder. His smile widens, and he turns.

CU: WALTER?S smiling face

WALTER: The man in black fled across the desert?

The camera cuts to a view over WALTER?S shoulder, the speck slightly larger ? closer ? now.

WALTER (voice): And the gunslinger followed.

OPENING CREDITS

Now the music really starts, a subdued and thumping electric guitar, an instrumental version of Rush?s ?Ghost Rider? flows as the words The Dark Tower appear on the screen. The credits roll as the music continues, aided by various screenshots of the hardpan, drawing ever closer to ROLAND, the gunslinger. As the credits come to a close, the music stops.

CU: ROLAND?S feet.

The words Part One: The Gunslinger appear and then slowly fade off screen.

The camera pans up slowly over ROLAND?S dusty, run down boots, faded jeans over long, slim legs, pausing for a moment at the huge revolver hanging at his hip, the bullets in his belt flash and wink at the camera. Up more, over the grey/black shirt that is rippling in the breeze, up over the straigh shoulders and finally arriving at the face of the gunslinger. Stern, hard, piercing blue eyes shaded by the flat brim of his hat.

Cut to:

ROLAND leading a very tired and rather ill looking mule by a leather strap to a sunken sod-capped hut. A yong man with wild red hair and a scraggly beard is pulling handfulls of devil grass out of a small stand of corn.